On Love
What is love? I have been musing this lately as my life and relationships shift from something so stable and familiar to what feels like a slide into chaos. I keep asking myself how I feel… but to know what I feel for who, it is important to drill into the nature of love itself.
We all begin as love. As a clean crisp representation of love. We know nothing else. We are open and ready to connect and accept without question. Until the first moment of disruption or perhaps devastation from another, crashes through our pure existence. This first hurtful interaction mars our existence as pure love. And the continued little or large hurts along the way, shape our ability to continue to be love and express as love. For we are the sum of our experiences. We are the product of our patterns. (But the thing is, we don’t have to be. We can all go back to love. If we choose.)
To love is to meet another with care, compassion and kindness. It is simple. Not some big mystery.
If we begin as love, the question becomes in each relationship, does the love begin to dissipate, or does it grow? And can it become unconditional? The most beautiful love that knows no bounds. Again, our ability or failure to love can be curated by our patterns… the way others loved or failed to love us… and our ability or failure to love ourselves. We cannot truly love another; unless we accept ourselves as love… and treat ourselves as love. To love truly, requires embodiment.
As we delve into relationships there is constant opportunity for growth or retraction. Do I love? How much do I love? What are the bounds of my love? Why do I love? These are questions that we can pose to ourselves to measure our place within the realms of love.
For some, the spectrum of experience that love can spring from is very narrow. Because of this, these people find it hard to love in general or hard to sustain love. Human experience is vast and varied. No-one is perfect and there is no mould in the shape of ‘lovable other’. We decide what is loveable and what is not. When we have a narrow band width in which to love, we cheat ourselves of so much glorious opportunity. There will always be a reason or a time not to love here.
For others, the spectrum is extremely wide. There is more opportunity to find love with another and there is more space for human error, depth of experience and acceptance of diverse interactions. For these people, love may be given more easily than it is received. In this space, we are expansive, accepting and open to others’ failings. We still love in the face of much ‘wrong-doing’. The questions then become: How much do I love without receiving the same love in return? Does love need to be reciprocal? What love do I wish to receive and from who?
Love comes in many forms and may be the foundation of many relationships. Often when we talk of love, it is in the romantic sense… the physical sense… the ‘couple’ sense. This moves to the idea of being ‘in love’. This is very different from love itself. We can love anyone from our kids to our friends, neighbours and even strangers. To be ‘in love’ is to feel your heart beat for another. To feel their heartbeat within yours. When we are ‘in love’, the level of care and compassion are so deep that we start to move not just for ourselves; but we consider the other within our own blueprint. Life is not just for I or me anymore. It is for the two of us. When we find ourselves considering the happiness of another, the future of another, and moulding our actions to support this person, this is being ‘in love’.
Forget about romance, passion and desire. These are not love. Romance is nothing more than fluff and fuss. Yes, it is enjoyable; but it is nothing but a colour. It is not love. When we consider passion and desire, we have an interesting conundrum. They may exist with or without love.
We may be wildly passionate about someone, we may be crazy with desire and physical urges. But in the absence of the heart that beats for another, that will to craft your life in consideration of them, the passion and desire may be reckless. They may be without foundation. And without foundation they may either explode or crumble.
On the other hand, passion and desire may spring from love. When we start from that heartbeat and that will to form around another, we offer ourselves the opportunity to engage with another heartbeat… to love and be loved in return. And as we consider their heartbeat , they in turn may consider ours. This is the dance of being ‘in love’. And it takes time to find the steps… steps that are unique to every pair; steps that do not come in a book or mannual. These steps must be felt and walked upon. And there must be missteps… for without the missteps we would not find the steps themselves. When we move to this place where we are dancing beautifully together, we find synergy in relationship. And we make wind as we move together. From this wind, passion and desire may grow. But they remain grounded… grounded in the foundation of love.
It all does start with love. If we can start as and with love and stretch our parameters in which we can remain as love, we are more likely to move towards the unconditional. And as we continue to widen our experience of love – both the ways in which we give and receive it, we may find a way to experience love on so many levels, or even to be ‘in love’.
